ESXi Home Build

[NachT]

Hi all,

Just after a bit of advice/suggestions really. I'm soon going to be setting up a new ESXi build for the home, and after looking around a bit, decided to go with the following gear:

- Intel Core i7-7820X Socket 2066
- Asus TUF X299 Mark2 (Socket 2066) Intel X299 ATX Motherboard
- G.Skill Trident Z RGB 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C14 3200MHz Quad Channel Kit
- Samsung 960 EVO Polaris 500GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive

My concern is compatibility.

What's the likely hood in the following, if anyone has experience with this type of hardware?

- Would the above motherboard and CPU function alright?
- What's the chances in the on-board LAN functioning correctly?
- What's the chances in the on-board M.2 drive being detectable/usable?


Cheers guys

 

[Sparky__H]

What purpose are you trying to achieve with a home ESXI build? What are you going to use it for?

The reason I'm asking is that your build seems a bit odd. The 64gb of RAM is a good call but the CPU could be potentially massively over-specced, the motherboard too is a gaming enthusiast board not a server board.

Have you checked the compatibility listing for 6.5U1 or checked the home server forums for users reporting it would successfully?

 

[NachT]

Hey Sparky,

So the server has two purposes, it will be hosting a lot of stuff used on my Home LAN (i.e. SQL Server, software based firewall and router, DNS filtering, NAS features like shared network storage, Security Camera hosting, a couple of hosted game servers)

And it will also have a secondary purpose for a home lab running on a separate VLAN. The home lab side will be quite intensive, along with all of my normal 24/7 running stuff above.

All of the above is the reason why I chose the CPU I have. I was looking at the Xeon chips, and although they run cooler/more efficient, support ECC and more RAM - I opted to go for the higher clock rate instead, and I'd still be able to reach 128GB RAM, which is plenty for what I'll be doing.

Yeah, the motherboard choice was kinda rushed. I just wanted something that could cope with the RAM amount, CPU and offered M.2. Open to suggestions on alternative boards though!

 

[Sparky__H]

Make sure you check comparability for the various parts of the board. LAN, sata controller, etc will all need esxi driver's. I've got a few Esxi boxes but I moved from custom white boxes to entry servers because compatability was a pita.

Do a bit of reading on the idle memory / cpu requirements of the vms you want to run. for instance my ad server uses 3gb ram and 30-300mhz of cpu 99% of thr time. in a home network most of my guests are starved of stuff to do and just idle.

memory though.. as much as you can afford.

 

[BlizzardX]

I'd echo the above; I have 112GB of Ram across three hosts which sit at about 70% used, but each host only has a single Xeon L5630 each which is never more than 15% utilised! Memory is more important than CPU unless fully loading each VM up and doing heavy compute tasks!

 

[Quartz]

If I were you I'd head off to ebay and get a second hand Xeon server. And I'd get two: one for your lab and one for the persistent VMs. And make sure you have IPMI, ILO, or similar.

 

[memyselfandi]

Also with some ear protectors and some shares in the electricity supplier you use ...

 

[Quartz]

Also with some ear protectors

Only if he gets 1 or 2U rack mounted servers.

and some shares in the electricity supplier you use ...

Going to need those regardless.

 

[BlizzardX]

I find my 2u Dell R710 actually not so bad, the combined 1u, 2u Dell units are quieter than my HP 48 port 1gbe switch!

 

[NachT]

Thanks for all the replies guys! Blades are planned for the future, when I have a spare room out of the way to keep it all in so the noise doesn't cause an issue heh.

I've gone ahead and done it, the ESXi whitebox is now setup and running perfect, really chuffed with how well it all went! I do have one question, but 95% sure i'm out of luck...

The board i'm using above, it provides the CPU temperature and S.M.A.R.T data over SMBus, which ESXi cannot read. I don't suppose anyone has any nifty ways of getting either the CPU temp or S.M.A.R.T data from whitebox builds? I've searched a lot, but couldn't find anything personally. Was thinking there might have been a driver, or external hardware way to get the data from the motherboard, but haven't found nothing,

 

[Deleted member 138126]

Thanks for all the replies guys! Blades are planned for the future, when I have a spare room out of the way to keep it all in so the noise doesn't cause an issue heh.

I've gone ahead and done it, the ESXi whitebox is now setup and running perfect, really chuffed with how well it all went! I do have one question, but 95% sure i'm out of luck...

The board i'm using above, it provides the CPU temperature and S.M.A.R.T data over SMBus, which ESXi cannot read. I don't suppose anyone has any nifty ways of getting either the CPU temp or S.M.A.R.T data from whitebox builds? I've searched a lot, but couldn't find anything personally. Was thinking there might have been a driver, or external hardware way to get the data from the motherboard, but haven't found nothing,

I have an Intel motherboard ESXi host I built, and same issue. I've never found a way of getting the info into ESXi.